Jurors Aren't So Good with Evidence
by: Abassos • March 22, 2011 • no comments
Stop whatever you're doing and read this recent article from the Vanderbilt Law Review: The Limited Diagnosticity of Criminal Trials. It's a bit thick with academic speech but it's well worth it. "Diagnosticity" refers to the fact that criminal trials are supposed to have a diagnostic purpose: to distinguish those who are factually guilty from those who are innocent. But it turns out that people generally and juries specifically are remarkably bad at weighing most criminal evidence, which Professor Dan Simon painstakingly demonstrates to devastating effect. As a direct result of this ineptitude, innocent people are convicted. Far more innocent people than it's possible to count. Professor Simon says that his thesis only applies to complicated trials but, in my experience, virtually all trials contain some of the evidence to which he refers:
- determinations of witness credibility
- eyewitness testimony
- witness memory
- scientific evidence
- alibi evidence
- confession evidence
- false corroboration
- emotional arousal
- racial prejudice
- and much more
If you have a case with eyewitness testimony, or any of these other issues, this is a great place to start as he lays out the most recent research on each issue.
Here's the thesis:
"The psychological research indicates that the cognitive processing involved in discovering the truth in difficult cases is more complex and fickle than generally believed. The determination of facts is influenced by a variety of factors, some of which are well known in the legal literature, while others are unknown, under-appreciated, and, at times, counterintuitive. Accurate determinations require high levels of attentiveness, meticulousness, and commitment to reaching the truth, which are often absent from the hard-hitting practices of the adversarial process. As a result, factual findings are bound to contain an appreciable level of inaccuracy, and are also vulnerable to manipulation. While faulty factual determinations lead mostly to the prosecution of innocent people, they can also result in dropped charges against truly guilty people and even in wrongful acquittals. The prospect of error is generally ignored or denied by those entrusted with governing the criminal justice system, and is not adequately recognized in the scholarly debate.
In sum, I argue that in difficult and contested criminal cases, the adjudicative process falls short of delivering the level of diagnosticity that befits its epistemic demands and the certitude that it proclaims."
An excellent example of such a false conviction appears in today's Washington Post article about the terrible guilt of a nice woman whose testimony sent an innocent man to prison for 30 years. Perhaps now that we can agree that false convictions are bad for victims too, we can do something about it.
